DWL 66⁺ Laser Lithography System

The ultimate lithography research tool

The DWL 66⁺ delivers unrivaled versatility, professional-grade grayscale capabilities, and the highest resolution of any direct-write laser system on the market.

As a highly versatile system, the DWL 66⁺ is designed for R&D and rapid prototyping in MEMS, microelectronics, microfluidics, sensors, optics, photonics, photovoltaics, material sciences, quantum devices — virtually any application that requires microstructure fabrication.

Key Features

High-Resolution Mode with 200 nm Minimum Feature Size: Our Write Mode XR delivers an unsurpassed combination of resolution, quality, and speed.
Grayscale Exposures with 65,536 Levels: Enabling grayscale exposures with outstanding surface quality in resists of up to 150 µm thickness.
Fully Customizable System Configuration: 30 years of continuous development and over 400 installed units make the DWL 66⁺ the most versatile and proven system on the market.

Take your Optical Lithography to a New Level

The DWL 66⁺ is not just a replacement for your mask aligner – it is an upgrade that offers a new level of accuracy, resolution, and structure fidelity. This maskless system will drastically reduce the time needed to develop new devices and it will offer new possibilities.

Instant Design Changes: Modify your CAD file and begin exposing immediately. No mask-related costs, effort, waiting time, or security risks.
Diverse Substrate Compatibility: The DWL 66⁺ exposes not only on standard chips or wafers, but on substrates of any material, size, thickness or shape – including curved surfaces.
Reduce the workload of your e-Beam Lithography System: In many cases, the DWL 66⁺ can perform exposures previously requiring an e-beam lithography system, freeing your e-beam for more demanding tasks.

Uncompromising Exposure Quality

The DWL 66⁺ is engineered for R&D, yet it incorporates core technologies from our industrial production systems to ensure the highest level of accuracy and reproducibility.

Controlled Environment: The DWL 66⁺ system includes a laminar flow box to minimize particle contamination and ensure thermal stability during exposures.
Interferometric Position Control: A high-resolution interferometer in combination with a real-time beam position correction ensures pattern placement accuracy and structure fidelity.
Real-time Autofocus System: The DWL 66⁺ includes the common optical autofocus system, but is enhanced by a proprietary secondary autofocus system that functions independently of optical feedback. This enables precise focusing even on transparent or low-reflectivity substrates.

Optimized Combination of Quality and Productivity

The DWL 66⁺ does not compromise on exposure quality to increase throughput. The write speed is specified for the highest quality setting and the write time will not depend on fill factor, shape, or number of structures within the exposure area.

Exchangeable Write Modes: Easily switch between Write Modes to optimize resolution and throughput for your application.
Proprietary Software and Hardware: The intuitive user interface, combined with optimized design preparation and fast data conversion, enables a rapid workflow from setup to exposure.
Full Automation: The operation of the DWL 66⁺ can be fully automated with automatic front- or back side alignment and a cassette-to-cassette handling system.

The DWL 66⁺ delivers unrivaled versatility, professional-grade grayscale capabilities, and the highest resolution of any direct-write laser system on the market.

Key Features

High-Resolution Mode with 200 nm Minimum Feature Size: Our Write Mode XR delivers an unsurpassed combination of resolution, quality, and speed.
Grayscale Exposures with 65,536 Levels: Enabling grayscale exposures with outstanding surface quality in resists of up to 150 µm thickness.
Fully Customizable System Configuration: 30 years of continuous development and over 400 installed units make the DWL 66⁺ the most versatile and proven system on the market.

Take your Optical Lithography to a New Level

Instant Design Changes: Modify your CAD file and begin exposing immediately. No mask-related costs, effort, waiting time, or security risks.
Diverse Substrate Compatibility: The DWL 66⁺ exposes not only on standard chips or wafers, but on substrates of any material, size, thickness or shape – including curved surfaces.
Reduce the workload of your e-Beam Lithography System: In many cases, the DWL 66⁺ can perform exposures previously requiring an e-beam lithography system, freeing your e-beam for more demanding tasks.

Uncompromising Exposure Quality

The DWL 66⁺ is engineered for R&D, yet it incorporates core technologies from our industrial production systems to ensure the highest level of accuracy and reproducibility.

Controlled Environment: The DWL 66⁺ system includes a laminar flow box to minimize particle contamination and ensure thermal stability during exposures.
Interferometric Position Control: A high-resolution interferometer in combination with a real-time beam position correction ensures pattern placement accuracy and structure fidelity.
Real-time Autofocus System: The DWL 66⁺ includes the common optical autofocus system, but is enhanced by a proprietary secondary autofocus system that functions independently of optical feedback. This enables precise focusing even on transparent or low-reflectivity substrates.

Optimized Combination of Quality and Productivity

Exchangeable Write Modes: Easily switch between Write Modes to optimize resolution and throughput for your application.
Proprietary Software and Hardware: The intuitive user interface, combined with optimized design preparation and fast data conversion, enables a rapid workflow from setup to exposure.
Full Automation: The operation of the DWL 66⁺ can be fully automated with automatic front- or back side alignment and a cassette-to-cassette handling system.

> 400 installed systems

Highest Resolution on the Market

Achieves a minimum feature size of 200 nm.

Advanced Grayscale Capability

Offers up to 65,536 gray levels, supported by powerful design software.

High Throughput

Exposes a 6-inch wafer in as little as 10 minutes.

Proven Technology

400 installed systems worldwide.

6 Write Modes

Minimum feature sizes from 200 nm to 4 µm allow you to optimize the performance for your application.

3 Grayscale Modes

Up to 65,536 gray levels, powerful design software, and GenISys BEAMER software interface.

Exposure Wavelength

Diode laser at 375 nm or 405 nm.

Dual Autofocus System

Includes both an optical autofocus and a proprietary pneumatic system, ensuring perfect focus on any substrate, including transparent or low-reflectivity materials.

Flexible Substrate Handling

Accommodates substrate sizes from 3 mm pieces up to 230 mm wafers.

High-Accuracy Alignment Option

Improves thermal stability and positioning for the most demanding applications, achieving a second-layer alignment accuracy of 350 nm.

Freeform Exposure Module

Enables exposures on non-planar substrates (e.g., convex/concave lenses) with feature sizes down to 3 µm.

Vector Exposure Mode

Ideal for patterning structures and shapes that require smooth, continuous curves and contours.

Fully Automatic Loader

Automated cassette-to-cassette handling for masks up to 7-inch and wafers up to 8-inch. An optional second cassette station, pre-aligner, and wafer scanner are also available.

Customer applications

Top-view SEM image of a metalens. — Silicon metalens with subwavelength resolution for high-performance flat optics. Read the application note to learn about the fabrication process.

Blazed Gratings at various angles from 10 to 70 degrees.

Concentric rings with a linewidth of about 200 nm and a pitch of 700 nm in positive photoresist. — DWL 66+ exposure of concentric rings with a linewidth of approximately 200 nm and a pitch of 700 nm in positive photoresist.

Pushing the limits with Write Mode XR – lines and spaces with 400 nm pitch.

Radial comb drive exposed in 80 µm thick mr-DWL resist.

Isolated line exposed with Write Mode XR in 300 nm thick resist.

Half of a concave Fresnel lens with 1 mm diameter.

Diffractive Optical Element (DOE) with 2 µm wide pixels in 4 µm thick resist.

Concentric rings with a linewidth of about 200 nm and a pitch of 700 nm.

Pushing the limits with Write Mode XR – a 100 nm gap between exposed features is achievable with optimized process parameters.

Fraunhofer logo across a 500 µm high etched side wall with 55° slope. Courtesy of Oliver Haverbeck and Jens Rodenbach, Fraunhofer IMM. Read the associated application note.

225 nm wide and 850 nm high ridges with 2 µm pitch remaining after exposure of the spaces in between.

Artistic fish relief in 60 µm thick resist.

Combination of an array of micro lenses with a diameter of 20 µm, a Fresnel vortex axicon with angles from 22° to 45° and the Heidelberg Instruments logo in 10 µm thick resist.

Why customers choose our systems

"Ordering a DWL 66⁺ machine during the time of the Corona pandemic was a great challenge. It turned into an advantage. Installation was in time. By remote training, we learned quickly about grayscale lithography, developed basic process knowledge with the help of three bachelor students, and jumped into our first industrial projects that gave us real-life experience and insight into the capability of our new tool. During this time, we had an intensive exchange with Heidelberg Instruments that was instrumental to go beyond the basics of 3D lithography. It is therefore easy to say that choosing the DWL 66⁺ was the right thing to do, and it complements well the other lithography techniques that we pursue at Paul Scherrer Institute."

Dr. Helmut Schift, Head of Advanced Nano Manufacturing Group
Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI)
Villigen, Switzerland

"Having had good success with the µPG 101 (ancestor of the µMLA) to make challenging diffractive-optical elements, we equipped our lab with a DWL 66⁺ in 2021. This tool is faster, has a larger writing area and provides good stability for high-resolution grayscale patterning. It enabled us to fabricate the largest flat lens made to date. The support and collaborations from Heidelberg Instruments are greatly appreciated, particularly to continuously improve the lithography processes."

Dr. Rajesh Menon, Professor
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, USA

"At our institute, DWL 66⁺ represents a bridging technology between classical mask-based photolithography, which can enable high throughput, and electron beam lithography, which guaranties very high resolution but is a slow structuring process. It is precisely here that DWL 66⁺ represents a complement to the existing structuring processes. DWL 66⁺ enables us to produce our own glass mask for conventional photolithography in-house, to carry out prototyping and to process structures in the sub-µm range with a large total area in an acceptable time."

Sascha de Wall, Research Associate & Group Leader
Institute of Micro Production Technology
Leibniz University Hanover
Hanover, Germany

"The DWL 66⁺ is a very flexible and versatile tool that allows to use substrates of any size and shape as well as a free choice of materials. For a company like XRnanotech that offers custom-made solutions that often deviate from ‘normal’ requests, this is a great advantage. The tool is essential for many of our existing products, such as Central Beam Stops and Silicon Nitride Membranes but also offers many new possibilities in the area of micro-optics."

Dr. Florian Döring, CEO & Founder
XRnanotech
Villigen, Switzerland

Technical Data

Write Mode	XR	I	II	III	IV	V
Minimum Feature Size [μm]	0.2	0.6	0.8	1	2	4
Minimum Lines and Spaces [μm]	0.3	0.8	1	1.5	3	5
Address Grid [nm]	5	10	25	50	100	200
Edge Roughness [nm]	50	50	70	80	110	160
CD Uniformity [nm]	60	70	80	130	250	400
2nd Layer Alignment over 5 x 5 mm² [nm]	250	250	250	250	350	500
2nd Layer Alignment over 100 x 100 mm² [nm]	500	500	500	500	800	1000
Backside Alignment [nm]	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000	1000
Write Speed [mm²/min] with Diode Laser (405 nm)	3	13	40	150	600	2000
Write Speed [mm²/min] with UV Diode Laser (375 nm)	2	10	30	110	-	-
Pixel Grid in x and y [nm]	50	100	250	500	1000	2000
Scan Speed [mm/s]	1800	3600	4500	9000	18000	36000

System Features
Light Source	Diode laser with 405 nm or 375 nm
Substrate Sizes	Variable: 5 x 5 mm² to 9″ x 9″ \| Customizable on request
Substrate Thickness	0 to 12 mm
Maximum Exposure Area	200 x 200 mm²
Environmental Chamber	Temperature stability ± 0.1°, ISO 4 environment
Real-Time Autofocus	Optical autofocus or air-gauge autofocus
Autofocus Compensation Range	80 μm
Standard or Advanced Grayscale Mode	128 or 32,768 gray levels respectively
Vector Mode	Enables the writing of stitching-free lines
Overview Camera	13 x 10 mm² field of view facilitates alignment to marks and substrate navigation
Backside Alignment (optional)	Allows the alignment of exposures to structures on the backside of the substrate

Advanced Options - Performance Upgrades
High-Accuracy Coordinate System	Includes golden plate calibration and climate monitoring: 2nd layer alignment over 100 x 100 mm² improved to 350 nm
Professional Grayscale Mode	65,536 gray levels, professional data conversion software
Automatic Loading System	Handling of masks up to 7" and wafers up to 8" with two carrier stations, pre-aligner and wafer scanner

System Dimensions of Standard Version
Width × depth × height	1300 mm × 1100 mm × 1950 mm (lithography unit only)
Weight	1000 kg (lithography unit only)

Installation requirements
Electrical	230 VAC ± 5 %, 50/60 Hz, 16 A
Compressed air	6 - 10 bar

Please note
Specifications depend on individual process conditions and may vary according to equipment configuration. Write speed depends on pixel size and write mode. Design and specifications are subject to change without prior notice

Download BROCHURE

DWL 66+ Laser Lithography System

The ultimate lithography research tool

Key Features

Take your Optical Lithography to a New Level

Uncompromising Exposure Quality

Optimized Combination of Quality and Productivity

Key Features

Take your Optical Lithography to a New Level

Uncompromising Exposure Quality

Optimized Combination of Quality and Productivity

> 400 installed systems

Highest Resolution on the Market

Advanced Grayscale Capability

High Throughput

Proven Technology

6 Write Modes

3 Grayscale Modes

Exposure Wavelength

Dual Autofocus System

Flexible Substrate Handling

High-Accuracy Alignment Option

Freeform Exposure Module

Vector Exposure Mode

Fully Automatic Loader

Key Features

Take your Optical Lithography to a New Level

Uncompromising Exposure Quality

Optimized Combination of Quality and Productivity

Key Features

Take your Optical Lithography to a New Level

Uncompromising Exposure Quality

Optimized Combination of Quality and Productivity

> 400 installed systems

Highest Resolution on the Market

Advanced Grayscale Capability

High Throughput

Proven Technology

6 Write Modes

3 Grayscale Modes

Exposure Wavelength

Dual Autofocus System

Flexible Substrate Handling

High-Accuracy Alignment Option

Freeform Exposure Module

Vector Exposure Mode

Fully Automatic Loader

Customer applications

Why customers choose our systems

Technical Data

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DWL 66⁺ Laser Lithography System